Navigating Technological Change on Work: Online Media Discourse in Indonesia

Paper Abstract: The future of work gains in importance in many parts of the world, including middle-income countries such as Indonesia. Technological changes such as robots and bots, AI and the emergence of platform companies become salient issues. However, we do know relatively little how these issues are perceived and discussed in the public sphere. We will look at the role of online media in this process analyzing content from leading news sources such as kompas.com, detik.com, or cnnindonesia.com for the last 10 years. We use a mixed methods approach analyzing keywords and search strings, but code the information manually. In doing so, we are not only able to extract the general emotive tone of these articles, but also the main topics and narratives about new technologies in the field of work. We can also relate this information to underlying differences in news sources such as ideological or political predispositions. Thereby, we are able to shed lights we are able to shed lights into how new technology shapes narratives about the future of Asian countries in more general. We believe the relevance of this research with the conference's third theme, 'Prosperity, the Pains of Growth and its Governance'. It explores the multifaceted landscape of economic prosperity and its challenges and further contributes to a nuanced discussion of economic growth.